Simulate proton smashing with updated LHC@home

Help find the Higgs! CERN has updated its LHC@home software, allowing …

Particle physics may be all about finding the unknown, but to do that we need a really strong grip on the known. If the Higgs boson is out there, it's just one of a large collection of particles that can spray the photons and leptons that are picked up by detectors. Figuring out whether there's a hint of the Higgs (or something even more exotic) in these collisions requires us to account for everything else that just looks like the Higgs. Subtract all that background noise and (hopefully) that leaves real signal for everyone to get excited about.

This simple description glosses over what's actually a hideous computational problem. Given two protons colliding at a specific energy, the Standard Model predicts that all sorts of things might pop into existence briefly, with the energy of the collision distributed among them. Because their hardware is different, each of the detectors at the LHC would register the results in different ways. Figuring out what this background of known events looks like requires the averaging of as many typical Standard Model events as we can model.

That's where distributed computing can come in. Each of these events can be modeled independently, making the problem embarrassingly parallel, so the folks at CERN have decided that home computer users should be able to get in on the action. As a result, CERN put together LHC@home, which has recently been given a number of updates.

Although the software uses the standard BOINC client, it's still not for the faint of heart. CERN does its scientific computing in a customized Linux environment, and its staff has decided that it's best to replicate that environment rather than trying to ensure that their software produces valid results on different operating systems and hardware. As such, LHC@home requires that users install VirtualBox, which lets the CERN environment run in a virtual machine on any of the major platforms. That's a hassle, but at least it lets users host CERN's Linux distribution "without risking the integrity of your machine."

Once installed, the software runs simulations of Standard Model physics that produce virtual collisions and predicts what they'll end up looking like in the LHC's different detectors. These simulations will go into establishing the Standard Model backgrounds that are essential to identifying when something unusual happens. This background is the dashed "Expected" line in graphs such as the one below.

The average Standard Model background is the dashed line here. The actual data differs from it at several locations on the energy spectrum.

We tried to get the system running on a computer here in the Ars virtual office, but the BOINC system indicated it was not accepting any new accounts at the moment (this seems to be a temporary hold). For those who want a taste of the LHC in the meantime, you can follow the progress of the machine using the same interface that many of the detectors' control rooms use. If you'd just like to check in on the progress of the work, the ATLAS detector provides a convenient readout of the amount of data it has obtained. Less than a week after clearing two inverse femtobarns, the detector is nearly a quarter of the way through a third.

We put a program inside your computer that puts a computer inside your computer to put a program inside your computer inside your computer that puts a computer inside your computer inside your computer to put a program inside your computer inside your computer inside your computer so you can model while you model.

sheesh! Seems like they outclevered themselves trying to hammer boinc into something it's not intended to be. The open part in boinc is seen as sufficiently important that there's an officially supported mechanism (anonymous platform) in the system to join a project using an app you (or another 3rd party) wrote instead of one of the official ones provided by the science teams.

I attached the project first I heard of it- I have VirtualBox installed. Call me crazy- but I thought it didn't need VirtualBox running to work- just the VirtualBox parts installed to do its job. That explains why it hasn't been working. If I have to have VirtualBox open I'm going to have to politely decline- It's just too much of a drain on my computing resources. Besides, I already have other BOINC projects straining my dual core.

Never in the field of human insanity have so much been owed by so many to so few. That is to be expected, of course, because thoughts, oka imaginations emanting from one’s past or one’s future, have no physical boundaries, the past being one’s ecstatic desire and the future being one’s euphoric creativity. When it comes to collisions, the best thing for sanity is to have the two imaginations colliding into thin air thereby realising reality - hopefully.

I take it this means the previous LHC-attached application in BOINC will no longer be working without installing VirtualBox? Anyone know if this is a resource hog? I'd hate to stop the LHC processes but if I'm losing a quarter of my computing power for the virtual machine I'll just use BOINC for other projects...

Really seems to kinda kill the whole BOINC idea...it was supposed to be an "all-in-one" distributed computing program. Now specific projects are requiring separate programs...boo

Knelix - you just have to install VirtualBox, BOINC is able to open and close it as necessary when it switches projects. (I haven't figured out how to force it to run minimized yet, but its not a big issue)

Dick Cheney - I'm not 100% certain, but I think it only uses the CPU,I haven't noticed it using any GPU time yet.

kakti - AFAIK, I don't think just installing VirtualBox will work, it has to be attached to the new project. I think they had to give it a separate project because it is so different from the old one.

Mr. Timmer - Apparently there was some issues with job distribution. They've posted that it should be fixed, so you should be able to join now. I haven't be able to get any new jobs since their little hiccup, yet.

P.S - If you do decide to run the project, make sure yo increase the amount of disk space BOINC is allowed. They mention that the VM required 9GB on space on the "Install VirtualBox" page, but don't mention that you have to also have to allow for that much space in BOINC (+ room for your other projects).

I would love to participate, but i would be simpler for me, to just give my box to the project than doing all this workaround. hell.. I would rather just install a clean linux distro, and let it run on that, keeping in mind that I would never put anything essential on that box, I would just go about doing cloud stuff so that if anything goes "its a meltdown!!!" I can just go into my laptop and continue working. letting the linux box die in a fiery death. I won't though go through the process of doing VM withing VM withing app, withing app... (wait.. VM withing app within VM withing app withing VM... or something like that.. I won't even try and reedit as was done by dsleif). freaking Kafkaesque hell.

If anything, it's an app running in a VM that is opened and closed by another app. It's nowhere near as complicated as people are making it out to be. To be honest, I like the idea of it running in its own VM, that means that my computer is safe from any bugs that it might have.

This is simply too convoluted for the majority of people to even consider.

What it reads as to me is "We'd like to use your computer, but we don't want to waste our time doing it right so we'll just do this ridiculous thing and see how many suckers we get." Good luck with that.

The problem on my end is: when VirtualBox is running, I can't run VMWare at the same time.. And I need to run VMWare at times for work-related stuff (to run Office).. Otherwise, I'd consider donating 1 or 2 cores to this (q9550)..